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Hills Like White Elephants Manipulation

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Familial roles play a large part in making a family work. If one person does not participate well, the entire relationship can shut down. Ernest Hemingway and O’Connor utilize dysfunctional family roles to indicate the hardships a family can go through during their specific time. Although O’Connor’s takes place in the twenties and Hemingway in the fifties, American disillusion is present in all time periods. The main characters are driven by their self-interests rather than the interests of others. “Hills Like White Elephants” demonstrates how in the situation of an unplanned pregnancy, the man takes on the selfish role of a bystander while the woman takes on a stronger more aggressive role in deciding how to approach the idea of an abortion. …show more content…

The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” uses manipulation on her family which ultimately leads to their tragedy. She manipulated the entire trip and made it exactly how she wanted, but one mistake led to a car accident and a gruesome murder. In “Hills Like White Elephants” the man uses manipulation of disinterest to attempt to convince the woman to get an abortion. He repeatedly attempts to convince the woman that they can’t be happy unless she goes through with an abortion; this is not necessarily true. The conversation proceeds, “I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.” “Then what will we do afterward?” “We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before” “What makes you think so?” “That’s the only thing that bothers me. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (121). The man’s constant thought of an abortion being the only solution towards being happy proves that the relationship is not as strong as they thought. He believes he can convince her by holding their relationship hostage, but the woman is smart enough to know that she will be much happier keeping the baby rather than dumping it. During the twenties, women did not have the option to express themselves or make decisions (history.com). So, this woman made a bold choice to make the decision. She fought through her husband’s manipulations and took on a new role in their relationship, a strong, independent

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In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a relationship unfolding, a complex relationship difficult to understand. The relationship is revealed by a conversation between a man and a woman, a topic of conversation that people rarely discussed in the period that the story was set. After researching interpretations, it is consistently said “She is pregnant, and he wants her to have an abortion” (Weeks 76), to which I agree that this conversation is about abortion. With the man seemingly pushing the topic and the girl hesitant and questionable, it is unsure as to the result of their conversation. However, it is my belief that she chose to follow her heart and not get the abortion.

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“Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway” is about a young couple with very bad communication skills debating over a problematic issue or decision for abortion. The main focus is of this big decision that Jig has to make. In the conversation readers can see that the two individuals are on the edge in their relationship. The communication between the two is very one sided and argumentative with little to no progress. The narrator demonstrates the emotional emptiness between the two characters while a threat of a decision intervenes on their relationship affecting how it will change and what the future will hold for them.

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1086 Words | 5 Pages

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